Christian Video Game: Kill The Faggot

[Potoooooooo]

ArsTechnica reports that "failed Christian shoe promoter" Randall Hermann yesterday released a video game titled Kill The Faggot. Hermann appears in the promotional video for a "Christian skate shoe company" that failed to launch last year after its Kickstarter campaign was canceled. According to materials for the shoe company, the product was intended to "promote the words and teachings of Jesus Christ through quality footwear." Herman's Twitter page notes that he is a "composer, 3D artist, game programmer/designer, skateboarder, and follower of Jesus Christ." His IMDb page lists a number of video game credits.

The video game has attracted wide attention on Reddit and in the gaming community. The below review clip of Kill The Faggot has been viewed 118K times since yesterday.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

In a neutral world where all people are treated equally, this would not be an exceptionally offensive game as far as crass video games go. My first exposure to GTA, for instance, was watching a Christian friend drive over a nun in a stolen vehicle. Negative and cartoonish stereotypes are certainly not new to video games or popular culture either. I like video games, but I'm not going to pretend a certain portion of them aren't pretty messed up.

But in a world where nun-bashing is (most likely*) far less common than gay-bashing or trans-bashing, there's a bit of discomfort to this sort of game. I highly doubt any person would take to violence from playing this, but it does create the impression that there are some folks out there with pretty dark thoughts toward LGBT people. If you get to thinking there are people out there who would target and harm you simply for being transgender, and you are aware that something like 0.001% of the population fits that bill, it feels like a rather sizeable target is painted on your forehead. Even if the extremists are a minority, that small number of extremists also has a small number of targets.

*I have to say 'most likely' because reliable statistical data for this sort of thing is often difficult to come by.

 

[Underseer]

Well, in most other games, people kill heterosexuals, therefore heterosexuals have it just as bad, therefore this game is not an example of bigotry. Once again, the gays are asking for special rights above and beyond what everyone else gets. [/conservolibertarian]

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, we recently saw a game about bread that wants to be toasted, I guess we could have a game about killing cigarettes.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

I didn't watch the video while at work ( I'd definitely be less judged for watching hardcore porn at the office than 'kill the faggot'). I'm pretty disgusted. From the audio in the game, it seems like some of the voice acting was done by Snagglepuss. I thought you were a cooler cat than that Snag. Oh how wrong I was.